Winegard FL-55YR FlatWave Amplified Razor Thin HDTV Indoor Antenna (Renewed)

I am 52 miles line of sight from the transmitters in downtown Houston and this amplified antenna works perfectly. I wasn't really expecting a flat antenna to work very well and that is the reason I decided to take a chance on this lower cost refurbished FlatWave antenna. Am I glad I took the risk! Overall, I've had fairly good luck with factory refurbished equipment because often they are more thoroughly tested than new ones. I get crystal clear reception - same as I was getting with cable television. I'm almost in disbelief. But remember that I live in fairly flat coastal land. There aren't many hills of consequence between where I live and the transmitting towers. If I had a very strong telescope, it's possible I could almost see the blinking lights on top of the towers 52 miles a way. If you live in mountainous terrain or have lots of tall buildings blocking your view of the transmitting towers, it will make it more difficult. But high frequency UHF signals are known to bounce. You might get lucky. For this price, you can afford to experiment.Installation:I placed this antenna on a bedroom window on the second floor of my house. The cable is not long enough to reach my television across the hall, so I connected it to a cable outlet in the bedroom. I went into the attic and located the cable from the bedroom and then connected to the cable going to my television in the home theater room. I used an inline coaxial connector to bridge the two cables together. I have curtains In the bedroom where the antenna is located and hid the cable behind the curtains and then tucked the coaxial cable under the baseboards alongside the carpet. The cable on this FlatWave antenna is a miniature coax and is fairly easy to hide under the baseboard. The only things that are visible are the inline amplifier and the power adapter. I will put a bookcase in front of those items.Prior Installations:Previously I purchased a Terk HDTVa Indoor Amplified High-Definition Antenna for Off-Air HDTV Reception and a Antennas Direct ClearStream4 HDTV Antenna along with a Motorola Signal Booster 484095-001-00 Bi-Directional RF Amplifier. I only got fair reception and was generally dissatisfied. I live in a neighborhood with a tough homeowner association and couldn't really put up the ClearStream4 antenna. Cable television is a minimum of $55 per month where I live and that is just for basic channels and most of that is not of any interest to me. I was using Aereo until the Supreme Court shut them down at the end of June 2014.Next I plan to install a PCIe TV card into my dedicated media computer and set up a recording schedule so I can record television shows to watch at my convenience. I have an ATI HD 600 PCIe card I bought a long time ago and never used - mainly because I couldn't get good over-the-air reception at my house and I didn't want to pay for cable TV. I use Netflix for my movie entertainment and ShowBox for my Samsung Note 8.0 Android based tablet. I bought a HDMI adapter setup to connect the tablet to my Sony receiver's home theater system.Anyway, I strongly endorse this product. I hope all the refurbished products work as well as mine. if so, you will surely be satisfied assuming you are reasonably close to the television broadcast towers and don't have mountains or other major obstacles in the way. I am in a flat terrain and even though I am 52 miles line of sight from the broadcast towers, I can possibly see them with a powerful telescope.

First off let me say this is the best indoor antenna I have ever owned. Now that we have got that out of the way, let me explain why I gave it a 3 star rating.I bought this antenna with high hopes. All my previous indoor antennas were sub $20 rabbit ear type antennas. Some of these were highly rated here on amazon. Some of these antennas actually did an OK job of getting most local channels, but not necessarily reliably meaning as you change from one channel to another you have to fiddle with moving and adjusting the antenna to get a signal that does not pixelate.I had hoped the Winegard would be an antenna that I could find an optimal position for, and not have to mess with as I changed channels, or on a day-to-day basis. I have tried various positions for the antenna, some at a window, some high, some low, on various walls (south facing, east facing), laying flat, and even considered mounting it flat to the ceiling if that would get good reception. The best position I could find is kind of laying flat on top of my entertainment center, but more of like a curved scoop shape. This has allowed me to get almost all of the local channels. The only station I don't get is one that is a bit father away, and it is no big deal. Overall I am happy with the number of channels I am able to get with this antenna. However, I am still facing the same situation I faced with the cheap rabbit ear types of antennas. I have been unable to find an optimal position for the antenna that allows me to leave it alone without having to fiddle with it in order to reliably watch the channels I do get. There are 2 or 3 stations that are on the threshold of "weak" and "good" signal strength. These channels still experience periodic pixelization. I can adjust the antenna slightly to eliminate pixelization on one channel, to the detriment of another channel. All of the stations I receive are within 40 miles from my house, with most being right around the 35 mile point. Since this is supposed to be an antenna rated for 50 miles, I had really hoped for more. I guess my quest for a good indoor antenna will continue.UPDATE APRIL 12, 2015: So after having the antenna a couple of weeks or so, I have played with different locations and positions. I have now found a better location for the antenna. I am still getting about the same number of channels, which is about 98% of the local channels available. But most of these channels now show a "good" signal strength on the TV. I still get some periodic pixelization, even on channels with a good signal strength. But I don't know that it is fair to blame that on the antenna. The really nice thing about the antenna is that it has a long cable, and is so thin and light that it is easy to position in various locations. Location means everything, especially when you are the distance that I am from the TV towers. I would upgrade my rating from 3 to 3.5 stars. I considered 4 stars, but just because the antenna doesn't meet my expectations, I can't quite give it 4 stars. Maybe my expectations are too high, but I have had people in the neighborhood tell me about more expensive in-door antennas that get all the channels without the need to fiddle with them. I am skeptical that such an antenna exists, but hopeful that one does. Overall, I do recommend this Winegard antenna.

Reason for purchase: Previous Panasonic antenna I bought some years ago was only picking up 6-7 channels on a good day. Cloudy day? No more CityTV / Breakfast television.Location: I live in a house in Central Etobicoke north of Eglinton with south facing window, ground level.Purchased the refurbished 55YR as it was $16 cheaper and it seems to work fine.Positioning: When taped to the wall behind the TV, it was picking up 8 local channels with good reception. When placed near window, it was picking up 13! The other 5 it got are US channels, some of which are a bit fuzzy but they are watchable. 1 channel stops working pretty quick so its 12 channels total.Issues:- The cable doesn't seem to be 18 feet long as advertised. I think they've included the amp wire length in the count which is not fair. I ended up sticking it 2.5 feet off the ground on the window (its a large living room window).- There was no usb outlet for the amp provided so had to connect usb cable to the TV. Thinking of messaging seller.- I tried using a splitter with some spare coaxial cables I have lying around to increase the length but the signal strength drops by 50%+ so no point.

Definitely works better than standard 'Rabbit Ears'. I did a comparison between a friend's cheap 'Rabbit Ears' amplified antenna and this one. One test was done in Newcastle ON and the other in Toronto around the Lawrence/Allen Rd area. In Newcastle the antenna was placed on the south window which faces towards the lake. I was only able to get 6 channels with the Rabbit Ears, two of which were good, 1 ok, and 3 not really watchable. However on the first try with the Winegard FL-55YR Amplified I was able to 8 channels all in perfect HD. Now this was on the ground level of the house and so I decided move the antenna around as I was just testing this against the patio window. I moved it just about a foot over and ended up getting 21 channels!! Note that location is everything and so it really depends where you are in the house, but never did I expect to get that many. I tried it in Toronto at the location mentioned above and instantly received 14 channels all clear. I scanned as high as 16 but only 14 of those were watchable and some were different from the original 14. This was on the ground floor of an apartment where the window is just above ground and so the antenna is only 2 or 3 feet above ground. It definitely works very well and was extremely pleased with its performance. Just remember that location is key and even though it is very good at receiving signals, the key is having signals to receive. For example a friend of mine lives downtown and his bank of windows face West and is open with no other structures around. This only provides him only 5 or 6 channels as there is nothing for any signals to bounce off for him to pick up on the West side as the majority of signals come from the southern side in the GTA....if you are getting channels with Rabbit Ears, you should get more with the amplified antenna.

After quite a bit of research of both antenna's and what I should expect as far as TV signals in my area, I went with a refurbished Winegard FL-55YR.I live in an apartment building (Ottawa, ON) and the indoor antenna I had (the old rabbit ear type) just wasn't receiving all the channels I should have been. I am very happy with the antenna! It picks up every channel that is being broadcast from the only transmitter I have line of sight with. Every channel is clear with no pixelation. The cable coming from the antenna is very thin and white in color making with quite easy to hide or hard to notice. The amplifier is also close to the end cable also making it easy to hide behind the TV.The only reason I didn't give it five stars was the refurbished antenna, in factory packaging, had several black scratches on the white side of antenna right out of the box. Using a white eraser I was able to make them less noticeable but none the less, still there. If I was mounting the antenna on a wall where it was easily visible I may have sent it back. I have it mounted in the window though so it's not a big deal and most importantly, it works well. I guess that's one of the issues anyone may have in buying a refurbished unit.

Mine works great! I live in a 6th floor apartment in West Toronto, right on the lake. I mounted it on a window - part of the patio door setup. The door had to clear the antenna and it did - even the terminal that joins the flat antenna to the cable. I put the black side facing out and you can hardly see it from the balcony. The white side looks fine inside, though it didn't matter to me anyway as it's behind a curtain. I plugged it into my 2019 smart tv, did a channel scan and it picked up and saved 40 channels. Excellent! But location is everything. It might not work at all if I lived somewhere else. But I figured I'd do ok and for this low price it was worth taking a chance.

Esta antena me sorprendió bastante, lo mejor que he visto hasta ahora.Yo la compré para el cuarto de la muchacha, vivo en Interlomas en la CDMX y las 2 antenas anteriores que tenía agarraban unos 3-4 canales dependiendo de la posición, pero nunca se podían ver los de Televisa y TV Azteca al mismo tiempo... esta antena Winegard me llegó muy rápido, es muy sencilla de instalar, la corriente la tomó del mismo USB de la TV, y al poner escanear me detectó alrededor de 17 canales, estoy sorprendido, estaba a punto de instalar una antena aérea pero ahora ya no, con esta ya la muchacha ve todo lo que quiere de canales locales libres en HD, y la calidad de la imagen es muy buena porque aunque camines y te muevas no se pierde la señal como con las otras 2Muy recomendada.